71st Plains Anthropological Conference

Wednesday October 2:-Pre-conference tour during the day (10:30-late afternoon; leave from Embassy Suites hotel on bus)

Tour of the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Paleoindian Sites of the Kersey Terrace near Greeley, Colorado

Dr. Robert Brunswig
Emeritus Professor and Research Fellow in Anthropology
Department of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado

The Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene age Kersey Terrace of the South Platte River south and east of Greeley has long been known for its important Paleoindian sites, including the well-known Dent site, location of one of only a handful of Clovis mammoth kills. This Plains Conference tour, led by University of Northern Colorado Professor Bob Brunswig, visits the locations of several significant Paleoindian sites, Dent (Clovis), Klein (Clovis), Fox (Clovis), Powars (Folsom), Frazier (Agate Basin), and Jurgens (Cody) and explains their role and context within the South Platte landscape and environment of the Late Ice Age and early Holocene.

Thursday October 3-Saturday October 5:-Symposia and General paper/poster sessions
-Symposia include research on the Middle Missouri, new advances in archaeological research in the southern Rocky Mountains, meanings in material cultural, new directions for the Dismal River aspect, archaeology’s role in education, historic archaeology on the Plains, research on the Hudson-Meng site, workshops on integrated archaeological sciences, the students role in the PAS, and Traditional Cultural Properties, as well as updates on research from members of the Colorado Archaeological Society

The Center for Mountain and Plains Archaeology (CMPA) is seeking participants for the 2013 Plains Anthropological Conference Lithic Raw Material Exchange. Looking to expand your lab’s comparative collection? Need a comparative sample of Alibates Chert? “Spanish Diggings” Quartzite? Knife River Flint? Do you have a bunch of raw material taking up valuable lab or basement space? The CMPA is looking for well provenienced samples of lithic sources from across the Plains and Rocky Mountain regions to be exchanged with samples from the CMPA’s own comparative collection. Come swap rocks with the CMPA as well as other folks that come to the exchange. Come share and discuss raw material sources from the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains!

Time and Location: Thursday afternoon, October 3, 2013. Plains Anthropological Conference, Loveland, Colorado. Please contact Ben Perlmutter if you are interested in participating or would like additional information (ben.perlmutter@colostate.edu)

-Evening reception and dance party with music by Halden Wofford and the Hi-Beams, free beer and a cash bar (8-11 pm).

“Equal parts Hank Williams and Johnny Depp, front man Halden Wofford pours forth a potent mix of rocked-up honky tonk, western swing, Dylanesque originals and spaghetti western epics. There is no creative limit to the songwriter, illustrator, author, storyteller and singer. But Halden has met his match in the Hi*Beams. Each outrageous tale he spins is met by the whine and wail of the steel guitar, the furious double-neck electric guitar and mandolin, and the relentless thump of the upright bass and drums.”

My goal is to talk about the connections between Mississippian societies, especially but not only Cahokia, and the appearance and development of horticultural ways of life on the Plains, especially but not only the Central Plains. This is not a new topic, but I hope to show that existing perspectives and knowledge lay the groundwork for new ways of thinking about these connections. I will especially grapple with the variability that decades of archaeological research has documented, variability that is hard to make sense of in the taxonomic frameworks we have relied on so heavily for so long. Instead of foci, phases, and complexes that were somehow influenced by their neighbors, I want to talk about active choices made by local communities and households about how to deal with changes and opportunities offered by nearby complex societies.

We will be visiting the locations of four trading posts (Fort St. Vrain, Jackson, Lupton, and Vasquez) on the South Platte River that operated simultaneously for a brief period during the late 1830s. I will be talking about these posts in terms of the larger social, economic, and environmental processes during their operation, as well as the influence of local Plains Indian groups on this trading locus.